Health care: Freddy Krueger lives

The origin of the Halloween costume is the belief that a mask disguised the wearer from evil spirits and protected one from harm. It is fitting, then, that this Halloween falls soon after the six-month mark of the infamous health care reform bill; the point when some of its effects begin to be felt.

Disguised as helpful, masked by promises of lower premiums and better coverage and cloaked in the secrecy of backroom deal-making, this law has already begun to inflict great harm on the American people, our economy and our federal budget.

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Caught in a cobweb of false promises, the American people were fed a story about how health care reform would insure everyone, allow people to keep their own insurance policies and reduce health care spending while improving quality. Sadly, these were fantasies masquerading as fact. The scary tale that follows needs no skeletons or vampires; statistics alone can frighten you.

President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats promised us that the new law would lower premiums. It has not. Premiums in 2011 will rise more than 12 percent for employer-sponsored coverage, according to a recent Hewitt Associates study. Out-of-pocket costs for workers, meaning co-payments, deductibles and co-insurance, are also likely to rise by almost 13 percent.

We were promised that, if we liked our coverage, we could keep it. But we were misled. The Obama administration recently revealed that employees of nearly 70 percent of U.S. businesses, who get coverage through their job, may lose their current health care plan because of the new regulations. The outlook is even bleaker for employees of small businesses, the backbone of the U.S. economy.

Low-wage workers also stand to suffer as onerous new regulations are implemented. These workers may lose access to their current benefits because the government will prohibit their employers from offering a plan that is affordable and provides substantive benefits for working families. Companies like McDonalds, which help low-income employees with insurance, have put us on notice that they may have to drop coverage.